>How did you guys get started with online trading?

With bitcoin.

>>1269538
>"stay away if you don't know what you're doing".
That's good advice. Some people actually follow it.
Better advice (that almost no one follows) is to spend time saving an appropriate pile of capital before you even consider it.
Unfortunately, the prevalent groupthink tends to endorse nickel and diming it, despite horrible odds and the brilliant strategy of substituting phone apps for brokers.

>>1269538
Watch markets for a few months and learn to avoid the shills. Know what participants are looking at, reports, fed, earnings, global economic data, etc..

Then watch Robert Shiller's introduction to financial markets to understand them conceptually, and learn about fundamental and technical analysis to know how prices can be affected by such.

Then dive in with a bit of money 500-1000$ on Robinhood is a good starting point and learn from your mistakes.

Gl

>>1269554
I agree but Robin hood can be a good learning tool for college students, noobs, and poorfags. Just know what it is and be ready to switch to a real broker when you have significant money at risk.

>>1269557
>Robinhood is a great starting point
Because you have to wait three days between trades, or because they lack real time quotes?

>>1269564
>Robin hood can be a good learning tool
No, I don't buy that.
It isn't even similar to interaction with a broker, making the "experience" you get from using it questionable at best.
I think your argument would work if it was the same as a broker, it could be of great help to those with little capital. Unfortunately, people with $500-$1000 shouldn't be trading, the odds are just ridiculously bad.
All Robinhood has accomplished is to persuade a lot of people that they are an actual brokerage, and since they work on a "fee free" model, poor people should be lining up to trade through them.

>>1269538
that is good advice, no harm in looking at or messing about with a sim, following news etc.. as you go

but do spend time learning about how the instruments you trade actually work... like if you decide to trade futures for example (leveraged but trading some futures spreads can take away some of that risk) then spend time reading the docs on the exchange websites and learn about the micro-structure of the markets you're going to trade, learn how the software from your ISV works, how it transmits orders etc... like say you live in the UK but use a US FCM and trade on a european exchange - are your orders going through a gateway hosted by your ISV at the exchange or are they going all the way across the atlantic to your broker's servers for risk checks etc.. then to an exchange gateway there and all the way back across the atlantic - sounds silly but plenty of retail traders are comically uninformed and could easily end up in that sort of scenario

you also then need to know your market in general, the news and external factors that affect it... plus you need some methods for analysing it - like techniques from signal processing, statistics etc.. the 'easy' option here is to go buy a 'technical analysis' book... there is a reason why it is popular and that is because learning statistics/time series analysis properly is tough and requires some understanding of mathematics whereas TA provides an easy framework for any idiot to try and apply (often subjectively). It is worth reading about partly to learn what some participants look for and partly because some of the ideas behind (the more objective) parts of it aren't completely retarded... but you can do much more than just stick a chart up and subjectively play around with parameters for indicators with no logic behind the values you're choosing/draw silly lines etc..

>>1269538

Stay away if you don't know what you're doing.

Also don't trade crypto, buy and hold but don't day-trade, it's literally gambling and you're statistically decreasing your E[R] with every trade you make.

If you don't know what E[R] means:

>stay away